CHAPTER 53

The Lead Player clapped the Woodcutter on the back. “I had no idea we shared the road with royalty. You should have told us, Woodcutter.”

The Woodcutter smiled. “I am only a servant.”

The Lead Player leaned forward and peered at the Woodcutter’s waist and whistled. “So that is the ax of the Woodcutters.” He stood back up. “Thought it would be bigger.”

The Woodcutter laughed. “I have often thought so myself.”

The Turquoise Acrobat interrupted their conversation. “Anyone seen Maid Maleen? She’s supposed to sing tonight.”

The Woodcutter placed a hand upon the Turquoise Acrobat’s shoulder and pulled him in conspiringly. “Just a request, from one traveling partner to the other. Tonight let Maid Maleen sing last for the wedding party.”

The Turquoise Acrobat looked at the Lead Player for approval. The Lead Player shrugged his shoulders. “Seems we’ve been royally commanded. She goes last.”

The Woodcutter shook their hands in thanks.

The Woodcutter was sitting in the hallway, looking at the smoke rings from his pipe, when the Duke bowed before him.

“Woodcutter, I beg your humble pardon. I did not know who it was that visited me that day so many weeks ago,” the Duke said.

The Woodcutter grunted and patted the bench beside him, indicating that the Duke should sit down.

The Duke rubbed his stockinged legs nervously. “I do not know how, but you found her. You found my love. I know I did not believe you could, but you did. But of course you did, you being the Woodcutter…”

The Woodcutter took his pipe from his mouth and pointed it at the Duke. “Now, you may have married your true bride, but there is more going on here than meets the eye and reason enough to worry.”

The Duke’s face flashed confusion.

“But I have a plan,” said the Woodcutter.

The Woodcutter walked into the banquet hall.

The Purple Dancing Lady’s face was veiled.

The Woodcutter walked up to the head table. Representatives from all of the other Twelve Kingdoms stood, bowing as he passed. The Queen and the Gentleman inclined their heads, but their eyes spoke that only the crowd in the room kept the Woodcutter safe.

The Woodcutter sat himself at the King’s right hand.

The King leaned over to the Woodcutter and whispered, “Is my daughter not just the loveliest you’ve seen? Takes after her mother’s side of the family, she does.”

The Duke’s face was taut as the Purple Dancing Lady leaned against his arm. “And didn’t we just have the most wonderful wedding? I can barely believe how happy I am. I will never forget taking those vows with you. Those vows were wonderful. And the church. It was such a lovely church with all of those people there. What lovely people.”

The Duke turned to the Purple Dancing Lady. “And I too feel a deep sense of contentment, being joined at last with my true bride.”

She tried to rub her nose against his, but he pulled back.

“Just one moment, my dear,” he said. He placed his hands to his lips and winked. “You were so charming as we walked to the church, singing those songs so sweetly. What was the one about the nettles?”

She looked down at the Queen and the Gentleman, but they were too far away to offer any help. She turned back to the Duke. “A song about the nettles? Oh my. My mind has forgotten in all of the excitement of the day. Let me just get a quick drink to wet these parched lips, and then I’ll answer.”

The players came into the Grand Hall, and the Turquoise Acrobat stepped onto the stage.

The Purple Dancing Lady clapped her hands. “Oh, look! The entertainment has begun! I chose them myself as a wedding gift to you, my love.”

The Duke took her hands in his. “Darling, what was the song?”

She waved him away, eyes fixated on the stage. “Oh, I don’t remember. Something silly I made up. A song from my childhood.”

“What you sang,” said the Duke, “was ‘Oh, nettle-plant, little nettle-plant, what dost thou here alone. I have known the time when I ate thee unboiled, when I ate thee unroasted.’ Don’t you remember?”

The Purple Dancing Lady shifted uncomfortably. “I remember it now.”

Her eyes flashed angrily across the room, looking, the Woodcutter was sure, for Maid Maleen.

The Duke stroked the back of her hand with a finger. “I was meaning to ask you about that. You ate nettles unboiled and unroasted?”

She looked at him warily. “Indeed. It is one of my favorite foods.”

The Duke smiled. “How fortunate! For your song inspired me so, and this night is so special, I took it upon myself to prepare you such a dish.”

He motioned to a servant, who uncovered a tray full of nettles and set them before the Purple Dancing Lady.

“Oh, my. Nettles. What a…delicacy. Unfortunately, I am so full I couldn’t possibly…” she said with discomfort.

The Duke’s eyes flashed dangerously. “You will eat your nettles, or indeed you are not my true bride.”

The King harrumphed. “Now what sort of behavior is this? Making my daughter eat nettles at her wedding feast?”

The Duke stilled him. “But she says they are her favorite, and I want my true bride to have her deepest desire.”

The Purple Dancing Lady locked eyes with the Duke, but lost the battle of wills. So she took one and popped it under the veil and into her mouth.

Open mouthed, she chewed it, spitting out the spikes as she could. Blue-flecked spittle stained the veil.

The Duke bit into the rich, juicy steak on his plate. “And what was it that you said at the footbridge?”

She choked upon the hard flesh of the plant. “Footbridge? I don’t seem to remember. A drink. I must have a drink.”

The Turquoise Acrobat was finished, and the Lead Player was upon the stage announcing the next act.

The Duke lifted his glass to the players as the Purple Dancing Lady called for a servant. “Surely you remember. You said, ‘Footbridge, do not break, I am not the true bride.’ Now why did you sing that? You said you would tell me later.”

The Purple Dancing Lady gulped down the wine. “Just singing to myself. Evidently I do that. I sing without thinking.”

The Duke leaned forward. “And what about what you said at the church door?”

The Purple Dancing Lady spat the last of the nettles surreptitiously into her napkin. The Duke raised an eyebrow. She explained, apologetically, “After all this time in the castle, they now scratch my gentle throat.”

“Do you remember what you sang?” asked the Duke.

“I take thee for my husband?” she offered halfheartedly.

He shook his head.

And Maid Maleen stepped onto the stage and her eyes locked upon the Duke. She opened her mouth, and like a nightingale, her voice rang out, “I sang, ‘Church door, break not, I am not the true bride.’?”

The Duke rose from his seat, fixed upon Maid Maleen. “And then I said, ‘The woman who wears this necklace is indeed my true bride.’?”

He turned to the Purple Dancing Lady and demanded, “Where is the necklace?”

She sputtered and sprang from her seat in outrage, but Maid Maleen reached into her bodice and lifted the golden chain. The crowd began to murmur.

Maid Maleen held the necklace high overhead. “Here it is, my husband.”

The Duke stood and pointed, declaring to the hall, “She that stands before you on that stage is the woman I married. She that holds the necklace is indeed my true bride.”

The Duke lifted back the Purple Dancing Lady’s veil, revealing her disfigured face.

The whole room gasped in horror.

The King squinted at Maid Maleen and then looked back at the Woodcutter in bewilderment. “How did my daughter get all the way up there? She was just here having dinner with her husband. My goodness.”

The Purple Dancing Lady screamed at the King, “I am your daughter! She drugged me and stole my things, and against all the laws that are good, she took my place at my own wedding! She should be burned at the stake!”

But Maid Maleen’s hands still held the necklace that the Duke had given her such a long time ago.

The Duke leapt over the table and pushed past the servants in the middle of the room. He jumped up onto the stage and took her face in his hands. “You, my love, are my only true bride.”

He lowered his mouth to hers and sealed their love in true love’s first kiss.

And with the union of that first kiss, the Woodcutter felt the wild magic trapped in the Duchy of Plainness rush its way home to join with the magic in the Eleventh Kingdom. It swooped in like a crashing wave.

The Dancing Lady shrieked.

The Queen and the Gentleman stood, knocking back their chairs.

The Queen screamed, “To me!”

The room erupted into chaos. Servants threw off their robes to reveal weapons and leather armor. The King’s men rushed forth to stop their attack upon the head table.

The Woodcutter loosed his father’s ax from his belt.

“Your Highnesses!” the Woodcutter cried to the Duke and Maid Maleen as he gathered up the royal family.

The Duke grabbed Maid Maleen’s hand, and they began running over the tables to reach the King. The Woodcutter met them halfway, swinging his father’s ax and parting the attackers. The Duke pressed himself against the Woodcutter’s back. “What is the plan?” he shouted.

The Woodcutter replied, “Take your bride and the King to safety.”

Suddenly the Queen laughed a laugh that stopped the fighting and caused the hair on everyone’s neck to stand up.

She spat at Maid Maleen, “You may be the true bride, but your line shall be all but barren! You shall have one daughter, and on her sixteenth birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, and when she does, she shall fall down and die!”

The Queen waved her hands over the room and shouted three words.

A plume of smoke rose from the ground.

When the smoke cleared, the Queen, her Gentleman, and the fighting army had disappeared.

The silence of the room was filled with sobbing women and vacant chaos.

“Oh my,” said the King, wringing his hands. “Oh my, oh my, oh my. This is not how wedding feasts are supposed to be.”

The Woodcutter spoke to Maid Maleen and the Duke. “Do not fear the Queen’s curse.”

The Duke clasped Maid Maleen close to his heart. Stricken, he looked at the Woodcutter. “I have not had to deal with curses before.”

The Woodcutter declared to the room in a booming voice, “The curse will die with the Queen’s death, but if in the coming days the Queen does survive and this couple does give birth to a child and she is indeed a daughter, I shall send twelve faerie godmothers to ensure her safety. Do not fear the Queen.”

The King looked over at the Woodcutter with such sadness in his eyes, looking at where the Purple Dancing Lady had disappeared. “So the girl was not my daughter?”

Maid Maleen parted from the Duke and went to the King, placing her hand upon his arm. “Courage. We shall find her yet.”

The King patted her hand and then stopped, his fingers upon her ring. He looked down upon it and then searchingly into the face of Maid Maleen. “Where did you get this, child?” he asked.

“I do not know, for I have always had it,” she replied.

The King’s eyes filled and his arms opened wide. “My child…oh, my child…It is truly you!”

Maid Maleen look around, bewildered. “You are mistaken. My father is a baker who lives on the border of the Land of Ordinary.”

“No, child, you are mine, stolen away from me and replaced by a changeling.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said as she backed away.

“Look at your arm. You have a mark just as mine.”

The King pulled back his sleeve and revealed a purple birth-mark in the shape of a bird.

Maid Maleen looked at the Woodcutter fearfully. He nodded for her to do as the King asked.

She pushed back her sleeve, and there lay the sister birthmark.

The King turned to her, brushing away the tears. “I believe there is a wedding feast waiting for the Duke and my daughter, his true bride.”